KINGSTON - Rather than having practice Wednesday morning, members of the Kingston Rowing Club spent their time on a recovery hunt after discovering their coach boat missing from the dock.

In discovering the boat beached in a nearby bay with seemingly irreparable damage, they were only slightly surprised.

As a non-profit, volunteer-run organization, the club works to provide an affordable opportunity for people of all ages within the Kingston community to experience the sport of rowing. Running various summer programs such as Mad Sculls for youth, masters rowing, adult recreational rowing and a junior and senior competitive program, the club is also a host to many high school and university teams. Furthermore, the club and the city have been home to several past Olympic-level rowing competitors.

However, despite the club's establishment of strong competitive athletes, it does not seem to have the same success when it comes to its equipment.

"This morning at 5 a.m. when I came down, our silver boat was missing and our white boat was sideways in the dock. They had clearly tried to take it as well, but it's got a big chain so they probably weren't able to cut it as easily," volunteer youth coach Steve Lutz said. "One of the other rowers and myself went out and did a little bit of a drive-around and we saw it beached up in the bay. They just cut all of the wiring and everything out of it -- it's all just lying there, so we can't even use it. And they had to come down here with something reasonable to cut the one cable, so it was premeditated."

Along with Tuesday night's incident of an initial robbery and subsequent vandalism, the rowing club has experienced several cases in the past of severe theft and destruction -- losing spare tires, electrical cords, windshield wipers and a truck last April.

"It was our guess automatically that it was theft because we've had stuff like this happen before," Lutz said.

The rowing club was already struggling to restore its truck that had been stolen and found damaged when it was, yet again, the victim of vandalism. As well as creating feelings of discouragement amongst the rowers and volunteers, Lutz explained that the damages often cost the team more than just morale.

"We got the truck back, but it doesn't run. I don't know what happened to it; it was full of mud and they had put a ball hitch on it, so they were towing something obviously, and now the engine doesn't run properly. We had to rent a truck to go to a regatta last weekend. That costs money, but we relied on the truck to take us to regattas all summer and in the fall, so we had to spend it."

Although hopeful that the club's security cameras will reveal the offenders, members of the rowing club have very little means of evidence other than a suspicious sighting on the morning of the boat recovery.

"When we got down there, there were two people that had arrived as we did that had a big duffle bag," Lutz said. "They came by and they sort of stood and looked at it and then walked away, so maybe the boat was brought there so that they could take the motor off of it or something, but honestly, I don't know."

Despite having no real idea who was behind the destruction or why, Lutz somewhat credits the incident to the opening of the K&P Trail in June.

"I will say that since this new path opened, we've had a lot more incidents of vandalism. It used to be that nobody would be down here, there was no reason to come down here. The path is wonderful, there's a lot of people out jogging and walking and there are families using it which is amazing, but it's made us much more accessible for stuff like this."

Moving forward from this recent incident of vandalism, the club's vice-presdient of communications, Julie White, has begun looking into potential future crowdfunding events. Meanwhile, members of the club are reaching out to the Kingston community for help with a GoFundMe page called "Get Kingston Rowing on the Road," in hopes of replacing the boat's electrical system.

"It's just so frustrating for our team to work so hard [training at 5:30 a.m., etc.], and then to encounter so many extra challenges," White said.

"It's really disappointing because I feel we offer great value for kids and for Kingston," Lutz said. "We all work full-time jobs since this is a volunteer position, so on top of our jobs and doing this as a volunteer program, now we have all the chasing to do for all of this, too. We just can't afford to have stuff like this keep happening.